LAKE COUNTY — Do you like a mystery? When you see one, do you try to figure it out before the end when the hero elucidates all? This one is for you, perhaps, but if you need to have it all wrapped up for you, you’ll want to see it twice. That would take nerve, though.

“Mindgame,” starring John Tomlinson, Rod Rehe and Pam Bradley, is a mystery for sure and a story that will leave you speculating, maybe stunned. It is directed by Tim Barnes, who has a pretty good idea of how far he can push a Lake County audience.

This play pushes pretty hard. The audience leaving the theater after we saw the play was moved, admiring and what, horrified?

It has a plot with many twists and turns. Reality that seems so clear in the beginning gets more and more elusive as the story progresses. It takes place at an asylum for serial murderers.

More than that, I don’t want to tell you. Giving you the ending would reduce your enjoyment to some extent and would relieve you of some of the stress that the violence on stage produces but there is no way to summarize the whole.

If you have the inner strength to see a play with a great deal of physical and emotional tumult, one that plays with your fears, you will want to take the whole roller-coaster ride, no hands.

Sometimes difficult stories are made to come out all right in the end and all the struggle and pain is neutralized by a happy ending. Sometimes it doesn’t all come out all right and the tragedy that you can see coming is fit and proper. This play doesn’t fit either of those patterns.
That’s all, that’s all. I want so badly to tell you, but if you see it, you will get so much more from it if I keep my mouth shut. And does it really matter what color a telephone is? (There are three hints in this paragraph. Sorry. Can’t help myself.)

I can safely say a few things about the production. Barnes directed, the same fellow who brought us “The Rocky Horror Show.”

There were many who predicted that Lake County would never accept a raunchy, surreal comedy like “Rocky Horror” and they were wrong. It was a smash and that was partly because Barnes didn’t hang back out of some kind of deference to an imagined timidity of consciousness in the Lake County soul.

Barnes directed this play with the same assurance, the confidence that we can safely take a walk “out there” with him.

The cast is dynamite. The roles are tricky, the script is complicated, a lot is asked of Rehe and Tomlinson. There are layers and layers, truths and truths and then the new truth, followed by the final truth, and finally the truth dissolves into a question.

These guys make these complicated characters believable.Sometimes you wish that they were not so believable. Tomlinson can be really scary.

Bradley’s part is not so complicated, but she has to convince you and then convince you of the opposite and help you up off the floor a few minutes before the end, just before you go home, realizing that you are finally “getting it” in the car.

There is some clever stagecraft by Wink Winkler that I can’t tell you about, except that it helps create the layers and layers of reality.

Look, I’d say you should go see it. You don’t get the chance to see theater this powerful very often and you won’t be harmed by it, you will be a fuller human being.

In the end, if you have a bad heart or if you are 8 years old or if the need to feel superior to the rest of humanity is your guiding light, you might not want to go. Too bad, though. It’s a great ride.

“Mindgame” performances take place at 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday at the Lower Lake Schoolhouse Museum. Performances follow in May at the Willits Community Theatre.

All tickets cost $10 and are available at Watershed Books in Lakeport, 263-5787, Shannon Ridge Winery in Clearlake Oaks, 998-8656 and Griffin Furniture in Clearlake, 994-2112. Tickets will also be available at the door. This show is for adults only due to violence and sexual content

by Anthony Horowitz

Directed by Tim Barnes

April:

Weaver Auditorium

 16435 Main St.

Lower Lake

Friday 20th 7pm

Saturday 21th 7pm

Sunday 22nd 2pm

Friday 27th 7pm

Saturday 28th 7pm

Sunday 29th 2pm

     Mindgame, by Anthony  Horowitz. is not for the faint of heart.  Be prepared to be scared.     This psychological thrill is guaranteed to raise the hair on your neck, tingle your spine and have you sitting on the edge of your seat through every twist and turn to the very end. 

    A popular true-crime writer, Mark Styler, arrives at an asylum sheltering the notorious serial-killer, Easterman, subject of his next book.  But before he can get to the object of his interest, he must first get through Dr. Farquhar, the institution’s head and pioneer of his own quirky methods of treatment, and the distracting Nurse Plimpton.

     Styler finds nothing can be trusted, not even his own eyes.  Characters are not who they seem to be, and there are many unanswered questions. Why is there a skeleton in the doctor’s office?  Where did the raw meat in the fridge come from?  What is Nurse Plimpton so afraid of?…and most importantly, how does one get out?

    Through a series of lies, manipulations, and memories, dark secrets are revealed.  You will have a tough time figuring out who is who and who did what.

  In the genre of such chiller-thriller plays as Sleuth, Deathtrap and Wait Until Dark, with a touch of Sweeney Todd thrown in for good measure, Mindgame is a dazzling thriller that twists its way towards a shocking conclusion.

    Tickets are $10 and available at:

Lower Lake Schoolhouse Museum

16435 Main St.

Lower Lake

Watershed books

305 N. Main St.

Lakeport Ca 95453

707- 263-5787

Shannon Ridge Winery

12601 E Hwy 20

Clearlake Oaks Ca

Griffin Furniture

14409 Lakeshore Dr.

Clearlake Ca

707-994-2112

A Lake County Theatre Company production

A review by Xian Yeagan

I should start off by saying that I almost always enjoy attending the theater in the Lower Lake Schoolhouse Museum, in spite of some limitations of the house that take skill to overcome. For instance, the stage is very small, the dressing rooms and backstage are tiny, and lighting is always set up as best it can be under the circumstances. But the LCTC has been dealing with these problems for years now, and has gotten pretty good at overcoming them. Furthermore, Linda Lake, the director of museums in Lake County, has a background in little theater and has developed the auditorium for producing plays in a very sympathetic way, with the firm support of the county government. The house only holds a small audience, but that is only a disadvantage from the point of view of the box office. The intimacy greatly benefits the audience.

There are some plays presented there that are even better than most. Let’s consider Mr. Dickens holiday ghost story.

There are scripts to be had adapted closely from the original short story, and the production rights to them are not expensive, but the director of this play, Suna Flores, rewrote everything to suit the house and the cast, and the result could have been off-putting. After all, everyone knows the story. There are some changes that everyone will notice, for instance the Spirit of Christmas Present is played by the beautiful Diana Schmidt rather than by a hearty giant with a booming voice, and Scrooge’s nephew and wife have been changed into a young niece. The two philanthropists who ask for money for the poor in the short story seem to have finally gotten the word, after all these years, that there is no point to going to Mr. Scrooge’s business for a contribution, so they make no appearance at all.

But these are minor changes; the core of the story isn’t changed. Scrooge gets reformed by visions of the past, the present and the future, and the love he has failed to share. The reformation scenes are really moving, and many eyes get moist. The greatest change is that Suna Flores has injected humor into the tale.

Dickens could write humor. His Pickwick Papers is pretty funny in spots. But when he was being righteous and sentimental, his funny bone got left on the plate, and the original Christmas Carol is relentlessly grim right up to the inspirational end. One gets so glad that Scrooge learns his lesson; one couldn’t take much more of that. Shakespeare would have shaken his head. Willy the Shake knew that a little comic relief puts it all into perspective, and Suna followed that illustrious lead.

Which gives me the opportunity to praise the work of Diana Schmidt and William McCauley as Christmas present and past. Schmidt has comic timing as sharp as a knife, and it is wonderful when a beautiful woman can make you belly laugh with a turn of her head or a look. McCauley has obviously had his bones replaced with dreams of water, and his face is just as flexible. Even Scrooge, played by the excellent Jon Zarr Haber, gets a few laughs, without weakening the portrait of the mean-spirited old skinflint.

There are a lot of children in this production, and for once they don’t lend an air of school project to the proceedings. They even sing on key and get the blocking right. They do tug at the heartstrings, but given the storyline, what can you expect?

And I have to mention the music, because David Neft has done such a good job composing it and playing it. I wish the hall had a better sound system, because from some seats, such as mine, hearing the dialogue was difficult occasionally. But that is a small criticism compared to the excellence of his invention.

And I have to mention the most annoying failure of this event, the lights. Sometimes actors fail to hit their spots and wind up in shadow, and that is annoying for sure, but on Sunday the problem kept recurring. One has no way of knowing if it is the fault of the operators, the lighting designer or the actors, but good lighting is inconspicuous, and bad lighting is unmistakable. Perhaps for the last weekend it will be all corrected. There are a lot of lessons to be learned there.

A word in the interests of full disclosure: your correspondent is a member of the Lake County Theatre Company and a member of the Board of Directors of the Lake County Arts Council. I don’t write many reviews, because I don’t enjoy writing thinly-disguised puff pieces filled with undeserved encomia, but in this case Suna Flores, the director of this play, asked me to review it, knowing full well that I would not spare my friends if I found weaknesses. Alas, I found very few in this production. You will have the same experience, a good one, too, if you catch one of the three remaining performances. I heartily recommend it.

The only line of dialogue I recognized as being utterly accurate Dickens is Tiny Tim’s final “God bless us, every one.” That is a good closing line.